Sadness serves adaptive functions in restructuring one's objectives and strategies in loss situations. This study examined the relationship between the effects of sadness, social components, and ...psychopathological issues in children, distinguishing between state and dispositional sadness. A semi-structured written interview about a specific moment of sadness and questionnaires to measure interpersonal features (empathy, prosocial behavior, and attachment) and psychopathological symptoms (internalizing/externalizing symptoms) were administered to 476 children (age range: 7–10 years, M = 8.81, SD = 1.07; 52.3% female; 91% White) from various primary schools in central Italy, along with their teachers. Network Analysis and Multivariate Linear Regression Analysis showed that state sadness was positively associated with affective empathy, whereas dispositional sadness was positively associated with internalizing/externalizing symptoms. The findings offer insights to parents and educators on the importance of recognizing and accepting sadness as an adaptive response contingent on sad events.
•State sadness in children can play an adaptive function and can be distinguished from dispositional sadness.•State sadness is contingent to sad events, whereas dispositional sadness is stable, inconsistent with real-life events.•State sadness was positively related to empathy.•Dispositional sadness was positively related to internalizing/externalizing symptoms.
Sadness, depression, and the Dark Night of the Soul: transcending the medicalisation of sadness, by Gloria Dura-Vila, London, Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 2017, 357 pp., £21.99 (paperback), ISBN-10: ...1785920561
A lockdown of people has been used as an efficient public health measure to fight against the exponential spread of the coronavirus disease (Covid-19) and allows the health system to manage the ...number of patients. The aim of this study (clinicaltrials.gov NCT00430818) was to evaluate the impact of both perceived stress aroused by Covid-19 and of emotions triggered by the lockdown situation on the individual experience of time. A large sample of the French population responded to a survey on their experience of the passage of time during the lockdown compared to before the lockdown. The perceived stress resulting from Covid-19 and stress at work and home were also assessed, as were the emotions felt. The results showed that people have experienced a slowing down of time during the lockdown. This time experience was not explained by the levels of perceived stress or anxiety, although these were considerable, but rather by the increase in boredom and sadness felt in the lockdown situation. The increased anger and fear of death only explained a small part of variance in the time judgment. The conscious experience of time therefore reflected the psychological difficulties experienced during lockdown and was not related to their perceived level of stress or anxiety.
•Participants who believed that they were receiving a medication that would protect them from negative emotions experienced less sadness.•The effect sizes were medium to large, suggesting that these ...effects could be clinically relevant.•Our results suggest that at least one symptom of depression (sadness) can be significantly influenced by placebos.
We aimed to examine whether drug-associated expectations have an impact on the experience of sadness. We hypothesized that participants who received an active placebo nasal spray (but were told that it was an antidepressant that would protect them from experiencing negative emotions) would become less sad than the control groups.
128 healthy female participants were randomly allocated to one of four groups: the experimental group, which received an active placebo and the expectancy-modifying instructions (“Protection: the spray protects from experiencing negative emotions”, n = 32), or one of three different control groups (“Sensitization”: the spray sensitizes to negative emotions”, n = 31; “Placebo: the spray is a placebo”, n = 32; and “Control: no nasal spray”, n = 32)
In line with our hypotheses, the experimental group experienced significantly less sadness after having watched a sadness provoking film sequence compared to the three control groups, with medium- to large effect sizes (Hedge´s gs 0.59–0.87).
Our results suggest that sadness can be significantly influenced by placebos in the short-term. Our study further suggests that knowledge about the effect of placebos on depressive symptoms should be utilized in clinical practice. However, depression is a complex disorder and antidepressants address a wide range of symptoms associated with depression such as suicidal thoughts, disturbed sleep and loss of energy. Further research on the placebo effects associated with the antidepressant treatment is needed.
concern generalizability to treatment because sadness is only one potential symptom of depression and antidepressants often also address other symptoms.
Neighborhoods provide essential resources (eg, education, safe housing, green space) that influence neurodevelopment and mental health. However, we need a clearer understanding of the mechanisms ...mediating these relationships. Limited access to neighborhood resources may hinder youths from achieving their goals and, over time, shape their behavioral and neurobiological response to negatively biased environments blocking goals and rewards.
To test this hypothesis, 211 youths (aged ∼13.0 years, 48% boys, 62% identifying as White, 75% with a psychiatric disorder diagnosis) performed a task during functional magnetic resonance imaging. Initially, rewards depended on performance (unbiased condition); but later, rewards were randomly withheld under the pretense that youths did not perform adequately (negatively biased condition), a manipulation that elicits frustration, sadness, and a broad response in neural networks. We investigated associations between the Childhood Opportunity Index (COI), which quantifies access to youth-relevant neighborhood features in 1 metric, and the multimodal response to the negatively biased condition, controlling for age, sex, medication, and psychopathology.
Youths from less-resourced neighborhoods responded with less anger (p < .001, marginal R2 = 0.42) and more sadness (p < .001, marginal R2 = 0.46) to the negatively biased condition than youths from well-resourced neighborhoods. On the neurobiological level, lower COI scores were associated with a more localized processing mode (p = .039, marginal R2 = 0.076), reduced connectivity between the somatic–motor–salience and the control network (p = .041, marginal R2 = 0.040), and fewer provincial hubs in the somatic–motor–salience, control, and default mode networks (all pFWE < .05).
The present study adds to a growing literature documenting how inequity may affect the brain and emotions in youths. Future work should test whether findings generalize to more diverse samples and should explore effects on neurodevelopmental trajectories and emerging mood disorders during adolescence.
One or more of the authors of this paper self-identifies as a member of one or more historically underrepresented racial and/or ethnic groups in science. One or more of the authors of this paper self-identifies as a member of one or more historically underrepresented sexual and/or gender groups in science. One or more of the authors of this paper received support from a program designed to increase minority representation in science. We actively worked to promote sex and gender balance in our author group. We actively worked to promote inclusion of historically underrepresented racial and/or ethnic groups in science in our author group.
•Sadness involves reduction of cortical control over evolutionarily ancient brain systems.•Basic emotion theorists have identified a SADNESS circuit, based on animal research.•Psychological ...constructionists have identified patterns of activity that dependent on context.•Competing models may relate to different levels on a phylogenetic hierarchy.•Dedicated funding to facilitate collaborative and transdisciplinary opportunities is needed.
Sadness is typically characterized by raised inner eyebrows, lowered corners of the mouth, reduced walking speed, and slumped posture. Ancient subcortical circuitry provides a neuroanatomical foundation, extending from dorsal periaqueductal grey to subgenual anterior cingulate, the latter of which is now a treatment target in disorders of sadness. Electrophysiological studies further emphasize a role for reduced left relative to right frontal asymmetry in sadness, underpinning interest in the transcranial stimulation of left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex as an antidepressant target. Neuroimaging studies – including meta-analyses – indicate that sadness is associated with reduced cortical activation, which may contribute to reduced parasympathetic inhibitory control over medullary cardioacceleratory circuits. Reduced cardiac control may – in part – contribute to epidemiological reports of reduced life expectancy in affective disorders, effects equivalent to heavy smoking. We suggest that the field may be moving toward a theoretical consensus, in which different models relating to basic emotion theory and psychological constructionism may be considered as complementary, working at different levels of the phylogenetic hierarchy.
Perhaps the most important single finding in the field of emotional aging has been that the overall quality of affective experience steadily improves during adulthood and can be maintained into old ...age. Recent lifespan developmental theories have provided motivation- and experience-based explanations for this phenomenon. These theories suggest that, as individuals grow older, they become increasingly motivated and able to regulate their emotions, which could result in reduced negativity and enhanced positivity. The objective of this paper is to expand existing theories and empirical research on emotional aging by presenting a discrete emotions perspective. To illustrate the usefulness of this approach, we focus on a discussion of the literature examining age differences in anger and sadness. These two negative emotions have typically been subsumed under the singular concept of negative affect. From a discrete emotions perspective, however, they are highly distinct and show multidirectional age differences. We propose that such contrasting age differences in specific negative emotions have important implications for our understanding of long-term patterns of affective well-being across the adult lifespan.
Music is a ubiquitous phenomenon in human cultures, mostly due to its power to evoke and regulate emotions. However, effects of music evoking different emotional experiences such as sadness and ...happiness on cognition, and in particular on self-generated thought, are unknown. Here we use probe-caught thought sampling and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to investigate the influence of sad and happy music on mind-wandering and its underlying neuronal mechanisms. In three experiments we found that sad music, compared with happy music, is associated with stronger mind-wandering (Experiments 1A and 1B) and greater centrality of the nodes of the Default Mode Network (DMN) (Experiment 2). Thus, our results demonstrate that, when listening to sad vs. happy music, people withdraw their attention inwards and engage in spontaneous, self-referential cognitive processes. Importantly, our results also underscore that DMN activity can be modulated as a function of sad and happy music. These findings call for a systematic investigation of the relation between music and thought, having broad implications for the use of music in education and clinical settings.
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